Tag Archives: Sensors

Graphene Biosensors are Extra Quiet

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Graphene has attracted enormous interest for electrically detecting chemical and biological materials. However, because the super material doesn’t act like a normal semiconductor, transistors require multiple layers of the material, and that’s bad for 1/f noise especially when the transistors operate at maximum transconductance. Researchers have found a way to operate graphene transistors at a neutral point, significantly reducing 1/f noise while not impacting the sensor’s response.

The team created a proof-of concept sensor that could detect an HIV-related DNA hybridization. The sensor was able to detect very tiny concentrations of the material.

The ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs) employed in …read more

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Review: IoT Data Logging Services with MQTT

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For the last few months, I had been using Sparkfun’s Phant server as a data logger for a small science project. Unfortunately, they’ve had some serious technical issues and have discontinued the service. Phant was good while it lasted: it was easy to use, free, and allowed me to download the data in a CSV format. It shared data with analog.io, which at the time was a good solution for data visualization.

While I could continue using Phant since it is an open-source project and Sparkfun kindly releases the source code for the server on Github, I thought it might …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Personal Guardian Keeps an Eye Out

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The Personal Guardian is a wearable tracking and monitoring device intended to help vulnerable people. The project goal is to allow these patients as much independence and activity as possible without a caregiver needing to be present. Wearing a sensor package might allow a memory care patient (for instance) greater freedom to wander.

The device consists of an Arduino 101 development board with a GSM shield that it uses to send SMS messages to the caregiver — for instance, if the accelerometer shows the patient fell over, or moved beyond certain GPS coordinates. Furthermore, the care-giver can monitor the device …read more

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Fochica Alerts You

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It seems like no one should need to be reminded about the importance of not leaving children in cars, but it still happens. The Fochica project is a Hackaday Prize entry that equips the family minivan with car seat monitors—the name comes from FOrgotten CHild in Car Alert.

It’s an Open Source project consisting of a Bluetooth LE-equipped Arduino that monitors whether the seat is empty or occupied. Paired with a phone app, Fochica monitors pressure sensors and the seat belt’s reed switch to determine whether there’s a kid there. The user’s app checks whether he …read more

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Websites Grabbing User-Form Data Before It’s Submitted

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Websites are sending information prematurely: …we discovered NaviStone’s code on sites run by Acurian, Quicken Loans, a continuing education center, a clothing store for plus-sized women, and a host of other retailers. Using Javascript, those sites were transmitting information from people as soon as they typed or auto-filled it into an online form. That way, the company would have it… Continue reading Websites Grabbing User-Form Data Before It’s Submitted→

Websites Grabbing User-Form Data Before It’s Submitted

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Websites are sending information prematurely: …we discovered NaviStone’s code on sites run by Acurian, Quicken Loans, a continuing education center, a clothing store for plus-sized women, and a host of other retailers. Using Javascript, those sites were transmitting information from people as soon as they typed or auto-filled it into an online form. That way, the company would have it… Continue reading Websites Grabbing User-Form Data Before It’s Submitted→

Sense All the Things with a Synthetic Sensor

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What will it take to make your house smarter than you? Judging from the price of smart appliances we see in the home centers these days, it’ll take buckets of cash. But what if you could make your home smarter — or at least more observant — with a few cheap, general purpose “supersensors” that watch your every move?

Sounds creepy, right? That’s what [Gierad Laput] and his team at the Carnegie Mellon Human-Computer Interaction Institute thought when they designed their broadband “synthetic sensor,” and it’s why they purposely omitted a camera from their design. But just about every other …read more

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